Suffice it to say that as head cheese is to the cow or scrapple is to the pig, the nugget is to the chicken: It’s the stuff that’s left over after everything else has been used up. So a Reuters news story tells us, reporting the findings of a study that in turn was recently published in the American Journal of Medicine. You don’t want to know, as I say, but let’s just list a few ingredients: fat, blood vessels, and nerves.

The chicken has become the world’s most ubiquitous food bird, very likely the first animal of any to be domesticated. This seems a sad end to a distinguished partnership that may be ten thousand years old, but it points to a reality: A chicken is no longer an animal but an industrial consumable, food is a product, and the captains of industry will feed consumers anything they can get away with, no matter how outlandish. Can Soylent Green be far behind? continue reading…

"Service Animal" Scammers (New Yorker): An increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being.